


No Special Hurry

by reckonedrightly, sifr



Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:55:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5465615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reckonedrightly/pseuds/reckonedrightly, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sifr/pseuds/sifr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'The people around you are vampires'," she quotes herself, sounding almost stern, reminding him that she is she's rarely wrong - and she raises her eyebrows, not having to say more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Special Hurry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merryghoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryghoul/gifts).



The worrying thing is not the blood that's been liberally splashed around the room. Beyond the gore, the rest of the room has four other notable items: the gun on the floor where it had dropped, its wielder unconscious and slumped against the wall where he had dropped, Alice dead on the floor, and John Luther sitting beside her and waiting for her to come to. He's not sure if it took, but he had to try.

The gore is no more than an irritation; with a little effort and bleach, it can be cleaned away. No, John is quite sure that the most troubling aspect of all this mess is that's it's far from the worst idea he's ever had. What unnerves him is not that he’ll be hiding a murder, nor that he’ll have ensured Alice is one step further removed from humanity; rather, that he knows her well enough that he feels no need to comfort her in the way a ‘good’ maker is meant to. Leaning against the wall, he recalls waking from own change and is momentarily overwhelmed by a memory of the sea air lazily drifting in through the window. The sharpness of the salt tang had never felt so clean.

When Alice wakes, she doesn't scream or twist or sit bolt upright; her eyes fly open but she wakes up quietly, thinking that she wasn't expecting to survive, that the blood soaking her blouse is getting cold and sticky (it is pooled around her, but not all the blood is hers, it smells different). Nothing hurts but when her eyes focus, everything around her burns bright and precise like a photograph.

"John."

There's a quiet noise of assent as he attempts (and fails) to pull himself back to something approaching presentability. He's always a touch dishevelled, a missed spot on his jaw where he didn't shave or shirt buttoned one hole off; it's an old habit that serves as both armour and disguise. From their first meeting, John has been sure that Alice has been able to see the intent behind the front. Luther attempts to assert some form of rationality and reminds himself that it's wrong to kill, but every time he looks over at her body all he can see is blood and he’s reminded that this is _Alice_ and she's so new at this. Faith in her control only goes so far when he knows that she'll need to walk out of there wearing a shirt without bullet holes.

"I pulled his shirt off," Luther gestures that it’s hanging over a nearby chair. “Lucky that it’s a button-down.” 

The ease with which he was able to remove the shooter’s clothing may be the only thing that’s gone right this evening. Early in the day he’d had the phone call promising him information on a series of cold case murders and he’d known it was a set-up. Ostensibly, he’d phoned Alice to ask her opinion, but in reality, perhaps subconsciously, he’d called because he wanted to know how she would react to yet another self-destructive action. Like a fool, he didn’t anticipate her desire to join him. 

She sits up slowly. She's soaked, her clothes sticking to her.

"So many people underestimate the human body's potential to cause a mess," she says, sounding almost petulant.

Staring at the her unconscious attacker, though, Alice feels like she knows everything about it — the facts (medical, numbers and statistics cemented in her memory), the memories (her parents' blood on her hands) and the instinct (new — but not totally unfamiliar).

"Not you and me, obviously. Other people." And she's moving towards the man slumped against the wall.

It's always a 'body' that creates a mess. When that man shot her, Alice's body made such a mess. He rubs the back of his hand against one eye, trying to separate his eyelashes that had been glued together by the spatter, and looking like a parody of a young man rubbing sleep away. The blood is starting to dry, tacky and pulling against his skin and he wishes it still revolted him, but that ship had sailed long ago. 

"They do wonders with dental recognition these days." He knows she has a knife on her somewhere; he has his own, but there's a slippery, purely pointless line between offering advice and actively helping her slit a man's throat. Alice looks at him and raises her eyebrows in faux surprise and taps her pointer finger along the spine of the knife she found in the kitchen. She nudges the man's chin up and to the side, eyes on his throat. "Yes. They do. Well. This _is_ illuminating, John. So many secrets."

So many secrets which all make sense.

She wonders if perhaps she's in shock, but dismisses the idea; the current situation is happening around her and so she's dealing with it. No need to pathologise that.

The knife flashes as she opens his throat. As she makes the cut, he doesn't speak but there's a subvocal rumble and he can't help but watch. From here on in, bagged blood and non-human will do well enough, but there's some fundamental need to kill your first. Some have argued that if one resists their first kill, they can avoid the eventual damnation coming to them. John does nothing to stop her.

"I kept waiting for you to appear on my doorstep wearing wax teeth." Alice’s lips quirk, a noise like a laugh getting muffled against the flat of the blade as she drags her tongue up it. Her eyes close.

She tries to be decorous at first, simply out of habitual clinical caution and because — she realises with a curious feeling, a little like falling — she isn't familiar with this situation. She isn't prepared for it, hasn't observed others or made plans. And she's so hungry that it hurts — 

At that point, she gives up on licking the knife, on catching blood on her fingers, and just attaches her mouth to his throat. The blood is warm, and there is no magical transformation in taste or texture- it's still coppery and thick, but it's wonderful. She wonders if other people (other monsters) agree; she wonders how much of this is the pleasure of blood drinking, how much the pleasure of murder. Her victim twitches underneath her hold and it makes it better.

She pulls back at length, blood on her lips, and looks over to John; her eyes are dilated, and she feels high on it — again, which part of it, she can't tell. "You could have told me, you know. I wouldn't have told a soul."

As she addresses him, John stills for a moment, caught in the act of absently licking the blood off the back of his hand. Context notwithstanding, it's a surreal moment. She was greedy to turn and he's down a few pints himself and would very much like to get back to his flat and top up. Rationally, John can recognize that it would be a monumentally poor decision to feed here and now.

"Could've. Didn't." There's going to be hell to pay for this later, but in this moment, his conscience doesn't trouble him. He licks his lips before continuing, "Eat. I'll get the rest together."

"You're ravenous." And the thought delights her, obviously, from the grin that her bloody lips twist into. The world is, yet again, full of surprises; John Luther is, yet again, the proof.

"You're a growing girl." John briefly closes his eyes, an admission that Alice is correct, before he leaves to gather up the supplies they'll need to disguise what happened here. Their own DNA is too strange, too inhuman to be traced back to them, but one too many literal skeletons in the closet isn't good for a police officer's reputation.

"And this is just your problem," Alice murmurs, before she returns her mouth to the man's throat; it's not so good now he's dead, she finds, or perhaps she's less hungry. Half of wonderful is still wonderful enough. Her head's reeling, and that doesn't happen.

It's a good thing her blouse is already ruined. This is messy.

John does what he can to clean himself up. He won't be able to get rid of all the blood until he has a long shower, but he can scrub the worst of it off his face and hands before raiding the closet and finding the least objectionable shirt.

When Alice comes looking for him, he’s sitting at the kitchen table, looking into the middle distance past a surprisingly thorough collection of cleaning supplies. Their dead friend had been prepared.

She's still soaked with blood, though she's very graciously trying to keep it from rubbing off or dripping anywhere and making an even worse mess; it just seemed like there wasn't much point changing, though she's gotten most of the blood off her face and hands. Her shirt has two bullet holes in it, the skin beneath them healed over perfectly. There's blood drying in her hair, but she knows how to deal with that.

"Cleaning first. And then you can give me all the gory details," she says, her voice musical. "Chop chop."

She's numb, blank, feeling slightly out of sync with the rest of the world, covered in blood she doesn't really want to be covered in. Cleaning the crime scene is practical and also something she can definitely do, something familiar. Reassuring like a glass of wine in front of the telly, like a well-known favourite film, like a long bath. (She'd like a long bath). She could step back here, consider the picture; she never does.

It takes him longer than usual to react to her presence and when he does shake off whatever thoughts overcame him, the first thing he does is lay a hand over the bullet holes in her shirt. Save the occasional threat or bit of violence, they don't ever touch.

John is steadfastly and with a great deal of effort saying nothing, but Alice can read it in him. She was dead. The supplies on the table in front of him tell him that the shooter had been planning to kill and dispose of either one or both of them. Even without a target at hand, his anger rises up and threatens to spill over. It's futile and only serves to fuel his hunger.

Eyes dark and with a low roll to his voice, John looks at her bloody hair and motions, "Shopping's already done."

"So I can see. Top marks. I'm glad I wasn't murdered by an idiot," she says, glancing over to the cleaning products but not for long — she can't look away from him for long, not when he looks so wonderfully angry. She doesn't want to miss it.

"It occurred to me back there, halfway through dinner, that you saved my life." Her hand slips over his, and in tones of reassurance she tells him, "He's very, very dead."

"Good." According to some very creative definitions, they're both alive and safe and that the shooter is exceedingly dead should be enough for him. It should allow him to put his anger to rest and the fact that it doesn't troubles him.

Later, he tells himself. Once this place is clean and the body gone. Later he'll find a way to work this off far from Alice. For a whole host of reasons, this is not something he wants her to see. This close, Alice must be able to notice that his teeth are sharper than any man's ought to be. Sharper still than they usually are.

"Clothes and trash bags in the bathroom."

He's still so furious; it's about her and it's lovely and with her new hypersensitivity she can see it all, feel it all — her skin prickles where he touches her. He's going to do something and he's going to try and hide it from her, how is that fair? It's not.

Those bullets could have been meant for either of them, she knows. Both of them. And being shot hurts. She's glad he's dead, because that she had a choice in. It doesn't matter whether she's glad that this has happened or not, because it's happened just like life does, and so she'll just deal with it until she comes to her conclusion. It won't matter either way. It will be opinion; now is more of a time for fact.

"Aye-aye, captain." Perky, smirking, clever, conspiratorial. Sharp like the knife she's still got on her person. She releases his hand and steps off to begin hard work.

Luther watches her leave before going to the sink and scrubbing his hands clean. With the amount of blood that's liberally sprayed around the living room, they're going to be there a while. As they begin to work, it's all John can do to hope that he’ll be able to keep hold of his hunger for a little while longer. It seems like he ought to be able to manage it, but with Alice around, he can't gauge it like he used to.

The floor is wood, which is a great relief, but there's still all the soft furnishings — a rug, sofa cushions, curtains — to deal with. Yes, focusing on what needs to get done is one way to push aside his emotions. Scrubbing floors and cleaning wallpaper lets him work on autopilot, but it never gives him that real release needed to let his anger dissipate.

They still need to do something with the body.

Alice is as meticulous as ever, quick and capable as she cleans up her own blood spatters. She wonders what the science behind it is; she'd like to experiment, have numbers and figures at her disposal.

Eventually, she stands with her hands laced behind her back, looking thoughtfully at the corpse. She rocks on her feet, turns her head to give John a smile.

"The eternal question. You know, he's not finished."

"But we are. He needs to be out of the way for a little while until pick-up."

Luther pulls out his phone and dials a number from memory and when he speaks it's with a sort of relaxed, easy-going familiarity Alice has rarely heard from him. "Hey, Doc, this Tuesday, what do you think about 'Amadeus'? Yeah. Yeah. I know. I've got popcorn, if you've lager? Yeah, and one of the fizzy things. You want to meet by that pub where you called the — yeah, yeah, that one."

Some people need blood. Some need bodies. It's only good sense to know someone who's willing to trade. It's even more clever to have a prearranged set of codes on the off chance that someone — be it internal affairs or another, stranger group — wants to overhear.

Alice narrows her eyes at his tone as she watches him. Her hand is at her lower lip and behind it she's smiling — no, grinning — in a way that could only be called wicked.

"Well. You certainly are well-organised," she says, looking almost as if she's proud of him.

He gives her a look that could roughly be translated to mean either 'wouldn't you be?' or 'I've had the time to practice' depending on how the light falls.

"Tip the couch back and I'll slide him under it. Then we can go meet the Doc." It's good enough for now and it's not a place that a random passer by would go looking for their dead shooter. Too low to be feasible for the living, most people are instinctively put off hiding a body there because of the 'discomfort' such a place would cause.

Alice isn’t at all surprised, just pleased — the new details are revelatory, but rather than come as shocks they fit like jigsaw pieces. What are we going to do with the body? It’s such a personal question, one sadly much ignored by mainstream psychoanalysis.

Or perhaps she just likes watching him gamble on other people’s assumptions.

"Who's he?" Alice strides over to the sofa and tips it back — it's light. No; it's not light. She's strong. "Beyond the obvious."

"He's a different sort to us." They're an 'us' now, aloud and uncompromising. Alice looks politely flattered, though they always have been an 'us', in her opinion John knows they've been an 'us' for longer than he wants to admit. His temper has settled back into a slow, banked burn that can wait. "Doc and I keep the peace here. We're spread thin. Very thin. Never more than a hundred in Britain. "At last count, they're somewhere in the low fifties. It’s fair to infer that keeping the peace means some manner of population control as well as a few other less hands-on but equally esoteric skills. It is quite likely that Alice is not the first person he's had to break out of an institution.

"He'll do pick-up and knows someone that'll need the body."

“For scientific endeavour?” Alice inquires, her face blank and guileless before her mouth crinkles up irrepressibly into the sort of sly, warm smile which shouldn’t have anything to do with crime scenes. Before he has to respond to that particular bit of dubious charm, she adds, “I have to say, I can't quite believe I didn't see it before. Not that I ever mistook you for someone ordinary, but I don't think that's just this, the — ah — v-word we keep skirting. How long has it been for you?"

"Two. Most die young." Once the couch is in place, John does one last visual sweep of the room before opening the door to leave. As they depart, he touches his jacket pocket, where there's the weight of something he didn't have with him when they entered the room. "When we're secure, I'll tell you the rest."

Secure, but not safe.

Alice doesn't blink as she notices. He's got the bullets; good. Sensible. Interesting.

"Can't wait," she says, not exactly sounding it — she's full of anticipation, certainly, and a greedy desire to know more (a need to know more — how strange, to be so uninformed for once), but she doesn't let her voice, at least, sound ruled by it.

She picked up a scarf earlier, left it on a blood-free surface; now she wraps it around her neck, leaving the ends of her hair tucked into it so that the matted blood is hidden — she gave it a cursory wring in the bathroom, but frankly that didn't do much. Well. It could be worse; she could be blonde.

Luther stands as a solid force by the doorway and thinks that the colour suits her. 

Forcing that thought aside, John leads them out of the house and towards his car. "It might be a while before you can drive. If you feel unwell, keep your eyes closed." He's not sure how the change has taken in her and she might be one of those that can't ever drive or is overwhelmed by running water.

"And, Alice, it doesn't always take. If you feel tired or like you’re slipping, let me know and we'll try again." He's never done this before with one of his own, but he's shepherded enough others along the way that the routine of it is easy.

When they're out, she finds her head snapping up as she's bombarded by new scents and sounds. It takes her a moment to fit them into context, to work out what it all means, but that's a skill of hers and it doesn't slow her down. When she slips into the passenger seat, she spreads her hands out on her thighs as if it helps her ground herself.

"Oh, I don't feel tired at all," she murmurs. It's true; she feels tightly wound, humming with energy.

Just the same, John will keep a wary eye on her. If Alice were to die here and now, after he's already done this unforgivable thing, he'd be inconsolable.

The drive is brief and when they arrive at the pub, there's a tall, rabbit-y looking man waiting in the driver's seat of a thoroughly anonymous looking catering van. As the car pulls in, he waves before getting out of the van and walking over to John, "Luther, you ugly fool, you haven't been so sloppy since, what, that time in '98? What are you d..."

And so, the Doc has noticed Alice.

Alice leans forward to smile at him, wide and friendly and with a hint of wickedness. Oh, he smells different, or perhaps he just feels different in a way she's unsure how to process just now — that's unusual.

"Hello," she says brightly, not missing a beat despite her new discovery. "What happened in '98?"

"Doc," he warns, but not before the other man mentions something about the Spanish-American war and a port town. When speaking about his age, it may not have been 'two years'. "This is Alice. Alice, this is the Doc."

Alice gives Luther a look with her eyebrows high — goodness, really — and then offers Doc her hand. "Fascinating," she assures him, as she shifts her previous assumptions once more.

It's probably going to be easy for her once she's gathered all the appropriate data and familiarised herself with the facts. She never thought of herself as human in the first place, really.

"I am the Doc and I exist only to make Luther's life miserable. I keep trying to turn him grey or shave a decade or two off the end, but it's to no avail." He accepts her hand, shakes, and Alice should be able to tell that his body temperature runs just a bit warm for a human. Not quite a fever, but a touch hot. "I'll get the drinks from the van and then you can give me the address, yeah? And, I really do want to see Amadeus. Tell me, where did he find you?"

"In police custody," she informs him calmly, noting the change in body temperature and judging it to be not as extreme as she wants to believe; she's going to have to get used to her new, enhanced senses. She gives Luther another half-smile, remember that time? "John needs no help being downcast. I try to lighten the load."

"Ha, he pulled _you_ out of bird lime? There's a neat reversal. See, John, _see_? Jesus saves, but the Buddha invests in karma." This may be the preternatural equivalent of mom showing off the 'naked in the tub' baby photos. At this very point, while John is quite sure that he's paying off a significant part of his karmic (or dharmic?) debt, it's good to have something irritating to focus on rather than tragic.

"But, but, enough from me. I can tell that someone hasn't been eating his greens." Doc gestures that John ought to leave the car so he can pick up a cooler from the minivan as well as give him directions to find his own snack. They may also be having a quiet conversation that no matter how well they disguise it, is entirely about Alice. Did Luther actually turn someone? Why? What will this mean for the rest of London? Is his self-imposed exile over?

Alice chuckles, and watches as John leaves the car. By the time he's picked up the cooler, she's slipped out too and darted around to open the boot — being helpful, not eavesdropping.

Of course.

The exile is not over. He'll still deal with Others in just the same way as he always has. There are a few cities in the world that have self-appointed guardians; in John's London, parasites can be tolerated, but predators won't last long. Geneva is another such city, while Rome has a powerful despot who rules based on whim. It is perhaps unsurprising that vampires are exceedingly territorial.

After wishing each other well, Doc gets into his van and drives off towards the shooter's flat, while John brings the cooler to stow in his car. "Home?"

Alice closes the boot with a bang, smiling at him. "Home," she agrees, returning to the passenger seat. "I like him. What is he — werewolf?" Light, not joking.

"He's the Reynard, the Fox King." His expression seems to imply that all the animal sort are a bit mad and who can really tell what goes on in their courts. John and Doc have known each other for nigh on two centuries and while they're not always allies, they are good friends. He really wasn't kidding about regular Tuesday night movies. "We're not the oldest in the city, but it's come close."

"Would it worry or please you to know that this makes a great deal of sense?" she asks thoughtfully, much more interested than concerned.

She's definitely feeling the movement of the car much more keenly that she would have before, she thinks (and already there is a before and an after, neatly compartmentalised) — it's not so much nauseating as intense and distracting. She'll take his advice on not driving for a while, at least until she's acclimatised, though she suspects she'll adapt quickly. She always has.

"It's a relief." He no longer needs to worry about how or when he'll tell Alice the truth. Unless he chose to disappear from the city entirely, it would've been inevitable that in a few years, she'd notice that he wasn't ageing.

"You'll either just love or loathe the others you meet; I've wondered if the bug only takes a certain sort." For some reason, being turned tends to only work on those that would already be willing to prey on humans.

"Really," she murmurs, a show of interest rather than a question, a conversational marker to let him know that she's thinking about something and that he's probably not going to like it. After a moment, she ends the suspense with, "Do you like being what you are?"

She's not interested hearing about the others, not now. Not when she can hear about John's existence. 

"Enough." Not so much that he hasn't dabbled in a little mostly ineffectual suicide. Young vampires die from stupidity or carelessness; while older vampires tend to require longer and longer periods of rest before they fade or end it themselves. They were all once born human and none of them were meant to live this long. "Less what I am and more the rest of the world."

John keeps his eyes on the road, avoiding Alice. "It's a hard age for us now, but you'll be radiant."

She closes her eyes for a moment at the compliment, smiling and acknowledging- yes, she fully intends to be, and while flattery is as frivolous as ever she wants it nonetheless. But — 

"You say that," she muses, “like you aren't invited."

"I'm old, Alice. Not as old as we can get, but I slept through most of the eighties and that didn't help." Waking up from a three year nap to Maggie wouldn't do anyone any good.

At the stoplight near his flat, John waits at the red light and scrubs at his face. He's hungry enough to be snappish and that humming, almost angry tension is back in his shoulders. It's mad that despite having just brought her back, he's sure that Alice can see right through him and into the ugly corner of his mind where he wants to drain every last drop from her. Not to savour it, but to really, truly glut himself and then sleep for a decade.

Soon, he'll be home, able to have a proper drink, and shut out all the noise and stink of the city. He didn't save her life. He wasn't able to. He's just been obscenely selfish and given her an extension.

Alice leans in a little and tilts her head with an almost clinical curiosity to watch him- her eyes are bright and her stare is intense. She frowns, and it's hard to tell whether it's a thoughtful frown or a don't snap at me frown. She knows his reasons and they fascinate her.

"Because it isn't the world that's made you tired, John, not really. I told you. 'The people around you are vampires'," she quotes herself, sounding almost stern, reminding him that of all the things she is she's rarely wrong- and she raises her eyebrows, not having to say more. She finds her earlier, unknowing choice of metaphor entertaining, but she stands by the sentiment; in fact, if anything, it seems even more appropriate.

"Some are, but enough aren't, Alice, and that's what makes the difference." John throws himself into his work and the people around him because their brief, human lives shore up his own humanity. Long ago when the Doc was first trying to work out how vampirism worked, they'd argued whether infection amplifies whatever essential traits define a person or if being Other merely offers the freedom to do whatever was already wanted.

"What would you have me do?" His tone suggests that this is an honest question.

"I think you know perfectly well," she says immediately, like she was expecting the question, and her voice isn't quiet so much as it has a whispering edge. The words she says are almost inaudible compared to the ones she doesn't — run away with me. Loud and clear. "'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.' This life is going to kill you — in fact, it's already started, and you're already of the opinion that perhaps that's for the best for all manner of reasons." She blinks, and with perfect calm adds, "I find that deeply upsetting."

John pulls into his spot and parks the car. Right up until that last comment, he'd been with her and about to say something flip about how after the first century, you're bound to start repeating actions. He can hear her heart sluggishly beating and the rushing noise of her new blood changing her battles with a line from Hemingway to fill his senses. He's sure that they need to get out of this car and rebuild some semblance of space or boundary between them.

He's having difficulty processing what he wants to do and avoids meeting her eyes when speaking, "Let's get inside."

Alice doesn't react immediately to what he says, preferring to continue to examine him; she can do that more deeply now, with these new senses that keep surprising her. They seem to wax and wane slightly, and she imagines that it's to do with how new she is to this — her own body, now unfamiliar. Is this how other people feel all the time? She's never actually wanted to know.

She smiles, inclines her head in a way that says _if you think that's wise_ and leaves the car.

She has questions she wants answers to, after all, and there is a knack to breaking down boundaries- and to building them up again, of course. Both of them are more than adept; a challenge rather than a problem, in Alice's opinion.

Cooler in hand, John briefly wonders if he's under surveillance by some internal police authority and, if so, what must they make of his bringing Alice back to his small flat with its flickering fluorescents and peeling paper. Would they wonder aloud and clinically discuss the possibilities or construct lurid, private nightmare fantasies filled with the sort of strange bloodlusts suited to a Hammer film?

The truth is somewhere in between. John goes first on the stairs not because he trusts Alice at his back, but so that he doesn't have to look at the scarf covering her bloody hair. It's safer this way.

Alice lets him go, giving a smile behind his back — the sort of smile no one wants to see on the face of a woman whose hands they can't keep an eye on — but she stays silent and follows. She's been here before, but not like this.

She's very glad she killed Ian Reed, she thinks, as she takes in once more the peeling wallpaper — it's not a revelation, because Alice doesn't do indecision or uncertainty, but it's a thought that comes to the fore and makes her feel balanced, calm. There are some facts about her that won't change simply because she can hear the city moving outside with a new intensity — she's still done everything that she's done. She's still absolutely calm in the belief that they were the right things to do.

She wanders, doing a cursory exploration for a few seconds, before giving an almost military turn to face him and stand in the middle of the room with her hands laced behind her back. She looks attentive (sprightly, possibly) and looks at the cooler for a few moments before she raises her eyes to his face and smiles. She needs a shower, actually, and questions answered, but she's got a morbid curiosity, and if he'd rather indulge away from her staring, he'll have to ask.

John knows what she's waiting for and it may be perverse to stretch the moment out longer than is really comfortable, but that doesn't spur him to move quicker. His preferred mug is a hideous, novelty mug that Zoe bought him during a long, long ago trip to Brighton for a friend's wedding. At the time, they'd laughed until their sides ached while trying to find something tackier than the reception they had endured.

His movements are smooth and regular as if nothing about decanting blood is unusual. Head tilted back so she can see his throat working, he drains the mug in a single, long swallow before refilling it. With the mug resting on the counter, he looks up at Alice wipes his mouth the back of his hand. One might expect that the blood would take the edge off the nervous, humming energy that seems to suffuse the air around him, but it only serves to make it worse and emphasize and other-worldliness that he tries so hard to hide.

His fangs are showing.

Alice's inhale is long and deep, like she's trying to taste the electricity in the air. She doesn't close her eyes. She couldn't possibly. Her hands are clasped in front of her now in an incongruously wholesome gesture — how lovely.

She walks towards him, slow and calm, her eyes glinting; she doesn't look purposeful so much as unstoppable, and she only comes to a halt when she's well within his personal space — so much for boundaries and space. She tilts her head to better examine him, gaze moving from his throat to his mouth to his eyes. Her smile is sharp.

He lays a hand on her — to one side would be on her shoulder, a little further the other way and he'd be holding her back the back of her neck. Standing so close he can each feel the warmth from her body, his palm rests halfway on her shirt and half on her skin as his thumb slowly presses against the hollow of her throat.

"Alice," he warns.

She can smell blood — her blood, his blood, her murderer's blood, the blood of someone unnamed or at least unknown. She wonders if she ever felt human in the first place and wonders if it matters and thinks that if he does this to her and then steps back, if he gives her all of this terrible brilliance and refuses to see it through, she will make him regret it- he can't keep her at arm's length. He never could. He certainly can't now, he mustn't now. It wouldn't be fair.

She breathes in sharply this time as his thumb presses against her throat, and lifts her chin up as if daring him. Or perhaps not _as if_ , perhaps simply daring him. "Oh, well, that would defeat the purpose of quite a lot of the night's activities, wouldn't it?" Her voice is husky, breathy. Her fingers brush his chest and then she flattens her palm there, over his heart, counting beats. She can hear them. "You know there isn't any point in trying to force space between us, John — it's quite simply not possible, and even if it were, it wouldn't help."

Just as stepping back won't help, John is aware that moving closer will prove even less beneficial. This knowledge doesn't stop him from slowly and deliberately leaning in to better catch the scent of her newly changed blood.

"You'll just have to take it back, won't you?" His question trails off into a low, hungry sound that has too much in common with a whine that reverberates through his chest during the moment before he strikes.

She chuckles, dark and low, and her teeth look far too sharp. "Flirt," she accuses sweetly, with a mock-stern tut, her smile wide. In the moments before, she lifts her chin higher, inviting or demanding. When he strikes, her fingers clench in the fabric of his shirt, her other hand finding the back of his neck as if encouraging him even closer or holding him there. She inhales sharply, raggedly, through her teeth, shudders and digs in her nails — she's still grinning, almost triumphantly.

It is a triumph. While it's true that repeated exchange will cement the change, that's not what this particular moment is about and he doesn't want to lie about it. He hasn't fed from the source in years. Even though the risk of transmission is so slight, John hasn't been willing to risk it. Not even if he'd been asked. 

He takes enough that Alice is bound to feel a little lightheaded and when he pulls back his mouth is still bloody and his eyes dark from pupils blown so wide that there's only the faintest ring of brown around the edge.

So that's how it feels to be fed from — it hurts, but not as much as it should, and she forgets herself, gets swept up in it. It feels intimate. Perhaps it's not meant to, perhaps that's just her.

When he pulls back from her she finds that she feels a little drunk, her head spinning. She's holding on tightly to him now, her pupils almost as dilated as his. "Isn't that better?" she prompts breathlessly, not looking him in the eye but instead staring at her own blood on his lips, then his throat. She feels hungry, dizzy, warm, disconnected from the world but not from this, like they've stepped into their own private universe; they should at least sit down, she's aware, but it doesn't seem like the most important thing at the moment.

They must be in a pocket universe, because the constants that John relies on to get him through the day no longer seem to apply. There's still a mug of blood on the counter that Alice could opt for, but it seems too far away to mention. For good or ill, he's never wanted to change his inability to measure and mete out his indulgences in neat little packages.

Turning to lick away the blood that is slowly seeping from her already healing wound exposes his own throat. "Such a mess."

She gives a low, thrilled laugh. "What a moment to get...fastidious," she murmurs, sounding almost drowsy. The idea of drinking blood from a mug seems laughable when presented with his bared throat; she can almost feel his pulse echoing through her.

Her hand slides from his chest to his shoulder, gripping tight as if trying to hold him in place, and she takes a moment to enjoy the anticipation before taking a sharp breath and sinking her fangs into his throat.

It's more than likely he wasn't talking about the risk of getting blood on their clothing, but they both know that.

The only sound he makes is a slow, measured exhalation as she bites and begins to drink. Finally, some of that normally implacable tension ebbs and as she drinks, he finds that he needs to lean back against the kitchen counter for support. No longer feeling the need to press down on her throat, his hand cups the back of her neck, his thumb absently rubbing along her veins on the unmarred side.

"Easy."

She hums against his throat, drinking deep — his blood is totally different in taste to that of the man who shot her; for some reason it comes as a surprise.

She doesn't take quite as much from him as he took from her; she nearly drained the man who made up her first meal in this new life, after all. Then again, she's also freshly turned and dizzy from him feeding on her.

She doesn't pull away from him when she stops, preferring to lick the last of the blood up. When she finally lifts her head, she's smiling, blood on her lips. Her hand moves from his shoulder to the side of his face, fingers very light but not exactly tentative.

"'Nothing in nature now remains unblooded'. Baudelaire." She smiles, looking of all things, fond with her eyes heavy-lidded and dark. "Vampires. You know, as a scientist — " she gives the barest breath of a laugh, her voice lowering to a near whisper " — I'm almost offended."

But she hasn't shown much incredulity, hasn't denied that any of this is possible. She's reeling, certainly, but the way she interacts with the world has never exactly been typical; she doesn't process things in the way most other people do. The exchange of blood has — for some reason — helped.

"Yet, there is method in it." If not necessarily fond, he sounds pleased and indulgent. There is no need to hurry, no emergency, nor any reason they can't let the moment stretch out. At the feel of her hand against his face, John closes his eyes and while he looks as old as he's done for the last two hundred years, some of the weight of that age appears to lift.

"Shower first or questions answered?"

"Answers," she decides — of course, answers. Much as she might like to be immaculate, there are things she needs to know; having gaps in her knowledge about herself doesn't sit well with her.

She waits for a few seconds before asking, caught up in her continuous examination of him. They have time. They have a lot of time. "How long before I need more?" she inquires finally, like she's offering him a riddle — as if the question is purely academic, an intellectual exercise which has very little bearing on her life from here on in. "The specifics must vary, of course, but...on estimate."

"For a few weeks, daily, but then once every couple months." It's possible to go longer without but it begins to take its toll on the body and mind. He's seen starving men surrounded by food rot from the inside out. "Don't put it off if you need to eat. Do not drink from the source. This is a disease and while it kills most it infects, an outbreak would be a disaster."

"It takes everyone differently. Heightening or lessening qualities without method. Some can't take light, or the play of light on water or glass, or get lost in repetitive counting." Whatever her weaknesses might be, they're unlikely to be consistent and will usually surface in times of great stress. "We'll know in a few days. The change moves in stages: a day as you are now, then a few more as it alters your body further."

"Healthy people usually can fight it off, so the bug only takes the dying. From there, most don't get this far, fewer still the week." He pauses, looking down at her before continuing, "Alice, less than 10% survive the year. I'm sorry."

Alice gazes straight back at him, perfectly level, her face impossible to read. "That doesn't worry me," she says calmly.

"Isadora Duncan; her neck snapped when her scarf got tangled in the wheel of a car she was a passenger in. And did you hear about the woman who died when she tripped and fell on the up-turned knives in her dishwasher? Nothing really protects us from death. Just like everything else, it happens all too often at random and in the most absurd, undignified and meaningless of ways. All we ever have are chances, not control." A smile curves her lips. "What's more, I should have died hours ago. These extra hours have been, oh — fascinating."

Her calm isn't a lie. Neither is it the whole truth. Control over one's own life may be chiefly an illusion, but Alice has always controlled herself simply by refusing to do anything but exactly what she wants to do- something rare, she realised early. She has always been wary of outside influence changing her, making her compromise and therefore betray herself. And this disease is an outside influence. Neither does she enjoy being weakened; being weakened in front of other people is worse.

Life has a perfect mortality rate. In the same vein as hookworms relieving the suffering of asthmatics or sickle cell anemia preventing malaria, this stranger illness provides its own benefits.

"I couldn't watch you die." He'd thought about it, about how a life and London without Alice would feel, and made the choice to try and bring her over. Unwillingly, he's reminded of the choice he made when Madsen was left hanging over the precipice and he's forced to wonder, yet again, if he'd made the right decision or if it will only serve to push him further into some new madness.

"I didn't fancy it either," she says, suddenly semi-sheepish, like admitting a shameful secret after her admission of the inevitability of death. It's gilded with wryness but it's true, just as the rest was true. Death is mathematical, factual; dying is pure sensation. Maybe the prospect of death hadn't been so bad as that of dying by someone else's hand — there's a certain insult in that, the perfect murderer getting imperfectly murdered, and of course she believes it would have been imperfect. Call her a snob, but everyone's vain and superior about something.

She tries to remember what it was and how it felt but there are holes in her memory. Better than holes in her. It had hurt, and she had been livid and a thousand other things, and then she had woken up different, and that's all she has.

In the moment of quiet after she speaks and she begins to delve into her memory, there's a pause when it looks as if he's going to tell her about his own death, but as his phone buzzes it breaks the atmosphere and John retreats back into himself. It's unlikely that he'll broach the subject again, but one day in the near future, Doc will likely lean over and tell Alice all the messy details.

"C'mon, we need to clean up. In the bathroom, there's a metal pail and bleach under the sink." He's not concerned about their own mess, but both of them likely have picked up gore from the dead man.

His phone going off doesn't make her startle, but she does lean back abruptly, looking and feeling annoyed at having had the moment interrupted, especially when he looked poised to divulge. It lasts a second, less than a second.

"Ah. Of course. The practicalities cannot be ignored," she says with a smile as she moves towards the bathroom (no direction needed; she investigated the whole flat very thoroughly long before today) to set about cleaning up. So this is life as a vampire; an eternal cycle of blood, then bleach, then blood, then bleach. The thought entertains her. It's not so terribly different to her life before.

**Author's Note:**

> Dearest Yuletide Recipient, I hope this odd little bit of fic warms the cockles of your heart. While she said she'd be content to be credited as a beta reader, the input and assistance of Mysterious Co-Author Number 2 (I'll be back to edit this after reveals!) was so invaluable that I could do nothing less than list her as a co-author. This is her Alice Morgan and she deserves the praise for that. 
> 
> The Hemingway quote that John is thinking of and that provides the title for this fic is:
>
>> The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.


End file.
